


He's brought you to home

by rabble_dabble_writes



Series: The Journey's Home [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26342311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabble_dabble_writes/pseuds/rabble_dabble_writes
Summary: The problem was discovered too late. Too late, as the kids of the session they were in had already gone through. Too late, as Terezi preceded alongside Kanaya with a thumbs up, knowing how the last five would argue about placement and approach. Too damn late, as they would discover grasping each other’s hand, John leading them, John attempting to finally get to finish, and-And it just didn’t work.He didn’t go through.---Johnkat Day prompt four! Angst. I wrote this a while back but I thought it'd be good to share now for everyone in the Johnkat circle. ;)
Relationships: Implied John Egbert/Karkat Vantas
Series: The Journey's Home [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1914175
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	He's brought you to home

It’s the pain that he feels first.

Not in his hands, which are tough but scrapped with scraps of what he believes is dirt. Not in his shoulders, and how they ache of a push from someone else into the tense dirt, firm and soft and breathing a life that they worked so hard into breathing into it. No, it wasn’t his legs aching from tiredness of standing too long, or how he stepped on one foot in a weird way that it’s too sore for his liking. It’s not the physical pain that hurts so much.

It’s the deep, overwhelming ache in his blood pusher, as if every beat of it is crying horribly. His breathing creates the type of wheezing that brings a sharp pain into his side, having trouble making a good enough breath of the oxygen he doesn’t deserve. What little breathes he does have makes it seem like he’s crying into the dirt. He wouldn’t have the power to deny it if they asked him.

And it only hurts worse from there.

It’s so beautiful. He’s never thought of the world, an outside place, as beautiful before. He didn’t have the time. There was no reason. There just wasn’t a reason to go and see the world, and think about its beauty, when he had the worry of friends and death and games in it. He couldn’t see the world when the world didn’t want to see him, or his blood, and dying was the possibility of not knowing how tomorrow would happen. Of not hoping far past enough today. 

But it breathes. Not only in arching city towers and fascinated curious-eyed creatures, the one he helped contribute to make and to take place, and only existed due to him, but how the wind cooled off his brow of pursed lines, the ultimate warmth of a sun that wasn’t death-glaring onto the face of a nocturnal planet. There were flowers, and there were rivers, and there were people, and they all were creations, from him and his friends, as they were the _gods_ , and yet they were barely considered adults. There were tones untinted with the agony of painful, aggressive existence for survival. There were bird beasts that made melodys, keys on a piano, sweet singing tunes that had no care and that struck a deep hatred familiar to him. And sunsets. Sunsets were pretty, and colorful, and had no possibility of searing off his eyes no matter how many times he had to close them when he felt the heat emanate off of a not-dying-yet sun. There was something about the way these creatures, his and their creations, living in this mass of life and living and just existing there, it broke him into little pieces. 

Sometimes, he thought he could hear his voice in the wind. 

Something about him would change. He suddenly would have an immense fear that everyone around would leave. That, one day, they would just not be there. He would wake up in night terrors about it. And although this fear was partial just to him, he would not be the only one to feel this solum quiet of hurt. Jade would have a type of pain etched into the slim grin of her smile that wouldn’t quite be like how she used to smile before. Dave would start refusing to look up, at anyone, as if he could pretend it would hurt less if the insane possibility of suddenly being gone were to be real. Rose would look guilty. She’d smile and she’d laugh and she’d have a life with her matesprit, but there would be moments she would find herself with Jade and Dave, quiet and unspoken, empty of someone’s words who were meant to be there, and she wouldn’t find the answers she wanted in comforting best-friends holding her hands. To be honest, none of them would. It wouldn’t be as if there was a missing piece. There were no puzzles. It would be as if a key aspect of reality had been taken. Color would be void and dark. Breathing would be gone. A name like his would echo, echo, soft enough in their ears for them to delude themselves that _someone said it_ but never hearing it quite clear enough to see where it came from. It hurt to hear ,in the wind, the laughter of someone great, only to turn and realise it was the imagination of what was wished there. 

He would never understand how they, the creatures in their homes, the ones they had made for them, wouldn’t understand something was _gone_.

Pain didn’t feel like fire. It felt like a river, real and rushing and making the realization that life was life and there would be death, no questions asked, and there would be the gone. The unremembered. It would piss him off to no end. There _shouldn’t_ be unremembered, _he_ shouldn’t be unremembered, the life that abided by the world anew did not deserve it’s gift of living without knowing who he was. It should’ve been a travesty. A hiccup of pain felt by all of those around. The population should have been in _mourning_ , and how dare they not see what was there, that there were ten kid gods who passed through a door without the crucial eleventh, and that everything in the world was absolutely wrong. Life did not deserve to go unknowing him. It didn’t fucking deserve to be _there_ and thriving and alive and breathing when _he wouldn’t_. It wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t. It wasn’t. It wasn’t fucking fair!!

It would dare to thrive without something so crucial, as if he wasn’t important, as if he did not deserve to see how well they had made life. It was completely unfair. Someone had to have made a mistake. It was someone, something, there _had_ to be something, because if there wasn’t, that meant that the entire time he was-

They had stood on the platform, together, finishing watching their universe take place. It was pulsing with new life, like Karkat had seen before, and this time, he knew that this was the end.

The problem was discovered too late. Too late, as the kids of the session they were in had already gone through. Too late, as Terezi preceded alongside Kanaya with a thumbs up, knowing how the last five would argue about placement and approach. Too _damn_ late, as they would discover grasping each other’s hand, John leading them, John _attempting_ to _finally_ get to finish, and-

And it just didn’t work. 

He didn’t go through. 

Karkat's mind had flickered to the thoughts he used to selfishly have. About the slight illogical idea that, perhaps, since this wasn’t his game session, it wouldn’t let them through. That he would not be able to revel in what he had tried so hard for over three years to complete. Just to make something _alive_. The slight bannishing of trolls from this new universe. Fear of being judged and not meeting the criteria. 

But it wasn’t even humans. It was just one. It was the one they all couldn’t let go. It was the one who fucking _deserved_ to go through, the one who helped all of them when they needed it, the one- it was _John_ , okay, it was _John_ and he _needed to go through the door, please, go through, let him please_ -

Karkat had never wanted something so badly. He had fucked up so many times, had seen so much, he had spewed a ton of bullshit he will never quite admit as bullshit from his think pan and his protein chute. But he wished for it _so_ badly. He had foolishly pleaded with him, and pleaded with his mind, and pleaded with the gods of which made the mistake he called himself to _please_ let him through, he would do anything, he would become mute and give up romance and give up his life, just _please please please he needs to go-!_

They all got desperate. They tried pushing him through. Jade tried teleporting him in. Dave attempted a time thing on the door that just led to the same problem. They all once again tried forcing him in. Rose cried. They tried and Karkat tried and he _tried_ , and he would have kept trying, god dammit, if John would have just _let_ him, because there had to be _something_ that would’ve done it. There had to be _something_ they weren’t seeing. 

They were desperate. And they were running out of ideas, running out of time, and running out of fucks to give. Karkat got desperate enough to declare, that, fuck the universe, he was _not_ leaving his friend’s side. And so he sat stubbornly away from the door. And then Jade joined him, along Dave, and John tried so hard to get Rose to see reason but at that point she stood pointedly behind Dave and Jade, a firm look on her face that said she was _done_ receiving any of the bullshit this was, they all were. It was one thing to have it happen to yourselves. It was entirely another, to make John, his fucking friend, _John_ , have this burden. He refused that truth to leave him behind. 

So he sat down in front of all of them, quiet, and that’s how it seemed to be for a very long time. 

Karkat doesn’t know when John started speaking. The silence had been too loud, too deafening, and then he started registering that his human voice was going in a low tone in front of them. It felt ridiculous in the way he was speaking to all of them. But it felt important, at the time.

_Do you remember,_ he would start a sentence, and then go on to recount something. Somehow, slowly, Karkat felt like John was accepting this fate. Rose was sitting, then, and considerably tensed less. Jade started leaning her head on Karkat’s shoulder, smiling sadly and closing her eyes to remember a three year journey she didn’t have with her John. Dave was quiet, but considerably so, thinking and nodding and listening to John, face twitching whenever John brought up something absolutely ridiculous and bringing up an inside joke Karkat only had a small time to be privy of. It felt like he was accepting it. This fate, they all refused to let him accept, that he would not let him bear alone. He talked to them, he listened to them, he laughed and Karkat found a warm comfort in that laugh, as if everything was going to be okay, if everything was going to be alright. He don’t know how, but knowing his friend was there, with him, was a fresh breath of _fuck you_ to the reality that had hurt all of them for so long. 

He wasn’t even aware of his grip of wind on him until it was too late. 

_I’m sorry,_ he said through the whirring noise, with a big smile, a smile Karkat now wanted to tear off his face because how _dare_ he think they will just leave him. _I’m sorry_ . _The Universe needs you. The other side needs you. All of our friends over there, they’re going to need you. I’m going to miss you._

Karkat screamed. Jade growled. Rose pleaded. 

Because how _dare_ he do this to them. 

How dare he think that they would ever be okay with leaving him to suffer in this place, alone. 

Karkat didn’t understand why John just couldn’t let them remain by his side. 

_Don’t be sad,_ he said cheerily, as if they were merely going home from a brief, emotional visit. _You better chin up, because I won’t be there to tell you to smile more._

Then, he threw them through the door. 

_John!_

The last thing Karkat would see was his friend, John, waving goodbye, and saying, _have fun!_

Have fun. The very last thing, accompanied with a bright smile of a blue-eyed boy he would never see again. 

It is the pain that makes him oh so aware of the crushingly beautiful sunlight, the groaning of his tossed friends, the softness of the grass below tickling his cheek. It is the pain that makes his shimmering translucent tears come, taking any screaming he would have done with it, a mark of his mistake with everything he’s done. Not only his friend, but his beloved creation, within the first universe he helped make, sacrificing a chance to them. Something that he’s never deserved. Karkat doesn’t make a noise as he trails his fingers into the dirt, watching as the little specks build up into swirls, tracing nothing important into it. Dirt, he thinks, that John himself deserved to have at least walked on. 

It is pain that makes him feel the gentle move of the breeze, cooling the tear streaks against his dirty face. 

**Author's Note:**

> I was actually inspired by an MSPaint adventure to make this? Mr. tamborine man by odditycollector is REALLY GOOD and so much in Homestuck style, so please give it a read if you would want your heart torn a little further! http://odditycollector.com/mtm/?s=6


End file.
